Apple Pie Hero
by Dizzo
Summary: It took Dean a long time and a lot of soul searching to finally realise what 'apple pie life' meant to him. But then no-one ever said the Winchesters were conventional.


APPLE PIE HERO

Written for the Summergen Challenge on Livejournal, and based on the following prompt: Dean's childhood was stolen from him. At JIBCON, Jensen said that Dean DIDN'T want a normal childhood when he was a kid - it was gradual that he realized what was taken from him. When did this realization hit him/what brought it on/how did he deal with it?

Disclaimer: I don't own him

Summary: It took Dean a long time and a lot of soul searching to finally realise what 'apple pie life' meant to him. But then no-one ever said the Winchesters were conventional.

xxxxx

Dean knew he was going to grow up to be a hero.

He didn't know what sort of hero exactly; he hadn't ironed out all the details yet, but he was determined that a hero was what he was going to be. No train driving or shelf stacking or boring nights in front of the TV for him. Dean was going to be a real, all action hero.

He thought he might become a soldier, like Daddy used to be, and do lots of brave things in the defence of his nation. Or he might become a firefighter, like the ones painted on the side of the wooden fire truck he got for his third birthday, and then he could rescue cats from trees and pretty ladies from burning houses.

His Dad used to be a hero; and from what Dean had heard, he was very good at it too, so Dean was going to be brave – there would be no doubt. Also, Mom was the prettiest lady in the world, so he had the future heroic good looks sewn up there.

He didn't know where his new baby brother or sister, the one that was living at the moment in Mommy's great big, round tummy, fitted into the equation. Maybe if it was a baby brother, he would be a hero too, but Dean knew he was going to be the best hero for sure.

Dean wasn't going to proper school yet, and he didn't know if they taught you how to be a hero at school, but Mommy and Daddy were always telling him how smart he was. He could already spell his name; 'Dean', see?

So he knew he could figure it all out for himself. No problem.

Then, on 2nd November 1983, Dean became a hero.

And it kind of sucked.

xxxxx

On that terrible night when everything around him was smoke and noise and suffocating heat; when his father pressed the squalling bundle into his shaking arms and cried 'take your brother outside as fast as you can, now … GO,' Dean learned what it meant to be a hero.

Now, being a hero was just Dean and Baby Sammy and a father broken in ways that Dean couldn't begin to understand.

It was a little boy, uprooted from his home and with a giant hole in his life where his Mommy used to be. It was a little boy who tried to be Mommy and Daddy to a baby brother who was the centre of his universe and who wet the bed more often than he'd care to admit when the nightmares came.

It was a Daddy who was gone away more often than he was there, who spent more time gazing into the bottom of a tumbler of Jack than at his sons.

It was the last can of spaghettios on the shelf.

There were no pretty ladies or cats up trees. There were no parades and star spangled banners. There were no white steeds and fire-breathing dragons like in the fairytales Mommy used to read to him.

Over the years being a hero sucked the life and soul out of Dean Winchester.

And that was right about the time that being a hero was exactly what his Dad was coming to expect of him.

xxxxx

Time marched on as time is inclined to do and over the years Dean's life lurched into conflict.

Yes, sure, there were things to be said for having a home and a stable, loving family; the classic apple pie life. There were three square meals a day, unconditional love, a bank balance and, long term, the prospect of your own wife and home and family. Unfortunately, there was also the prospect of a soul-destroying job to pay for it all.

Dean's job, apart from being a hero, was taking care of Sammy. He had never and would never shirk his responsibilities to the one purpose in his life; a purpose that had begun on that terrifying night in November all those years ago - to keep Sammy safe. He knew that Sammy saw him as a hero, even if his father was slow to recognise it. Dean knew that a world without Sammy in it was a world too frightening for even a hero to contemplate.

As Dean passed through the treadmill of the various high schools he grudgingly attended, he saw all the students with that same glazed look in their eyes, scurrying around like harried little drones, the same mantra on their lips; gotta be home before curfew, gotta get good grades, gotta cram for exams, gotta get a good job …

Dean got to stay out all night with his Dad, see things that most people never saw in an entire lifetime, and if he felt like crap in the morning, he got to skip school.

He got to shoot, and fight and learn to hunt. He got to live high on adrenaline. He got to help his Dad save lives. One day, it would be him saving those lives, and that was way cooler than winning any stupid spelling bee.

Dean lived to make his father proud. To hear his father say the words; "you're a hero, son."

However, deep down, there was just a small part of him that wished; couldn't he just be a hero with a Mom and a home, and a GED?

Apparently, the hero job description doesn't come with fringe benefits like that apple pie life.

xxxxx

But if his life had taught him anything, it was that it had a sick sense of humour.

And after the rollercoaster ride that was his early adult years, when he lost Sammy to Stanford, then lost his father, only to regain Sammy again in the worst possible circumstances; in the tumult that followed Dean finally heard his father say the words that he had lived to hear. That he was proud of Dean. However, to hear them said on the man's dying breath somehow rendered them pointless.

Dean finally had his father's longed-for validation, and yet he'd never felt so empty.

Being a hero was all Dean had now; all he knew. He'd seen both his father and his brother, the two people on earth that gave his life meaning, abandon him over recent years, and he was ready to give up on home and family. The apple pie wasn't worth the pain.

Except that maybe it was.

Beneath all the swagger, the smartass smirk and the bravado was that same little boy who still loved his brother and missed his Mom so badly it was a physical pain.

All those years ago, he'd let Sammy go; let him go because he loved him. He'd stood and watched silently as Sammy walked away, taking the tattered shreds of Dean's heart with him, to get that bigshot education that he wanted to enable him to live the life that Dean both rejected and craved.

Dean had been equal parts proud and envious.

xxxxx

It was after the whole storm went down at Stull Cemetary, that Dean finally tasted the life that had always been just out of his grasp.

Following Sam's descent into the pit, Dean had shown up, insensate with grief and fallen into the arms of Lisa.

For a year, he played happy families with Lisa and Ben. He took a job at a local construction firm and came home every evening to a hot meal on the table. He helped Ben with his homework as best he could, helped him along the rocky path from boy to man. He and Lisa had barbecues with the neighbours and sacked out on the couch some nights with a tub of popcorn and a bad movie after Ben had gone to bed.

He finally had a home, and family. For the first time, Dean experienced security and comfort. He experienced the physical love with a woman who meant everything to him and who loved him back, not just some nameless hook-up from the local bar.

Dean had a real, honest to goodness relationship built on the bedrock of a promise to Sam.

'You go find Lisa. You pray to god she's dumb enough to take you in, and you - you have barbecues and go to football games. You go live some normal, apple-pie life, Dean. Promise me.'

And Dean had promised. He was finally living his classic apple pie life.

But the apples were bitter.

xxxxx

Now Dean has the bunker.

He has a home; a home with four walls and roof. He has his own room, a kitchen, the best shower in the world and a memory foam mattress that remembers him.

Dean is mother and father to his family. Admittedly, his family numbers just one person, and that person is built like the rock of Gibraltar so really doesn't need mothering, but Dean doesn't care.

That person is Dean's reason for existing. That person is the air in Dean's lungs and the beat of his heart.

That person is Sam.

And now Dean knows that's all he needs. That's all he's ever needed.

Dean cooks and cleans, and fixes the plumbing when it rattles. Sam bitches about being treated like a kid. Dean ignores him because he knows Sam loves him back with every atom of his being.

In between times, he and Sam are heroes. They save people, they hunt things. The family business is alive and well.

Here Dean has everything he needs.

Here Dean can be what he wants to be, live how he wants to live.

Now he knows that apple pies come in all shapes and sizes.

xxxxx

end


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